Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
"oe" and "ae" ligatures are present in pretty much every font, and are extremely common in British English, although both have been very largely replaced with a simple "e" in US English (with the interesting exception of the word "phoenix", although I note that there is a place called "Phenix City" in Alabama).
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Ah, yes, but I was referring to stylistic ligatures. Alphabetic ligatures are needed in the source, often just to indicate the date of the source. I would not change the spelling of a classic in this regard. But that is much different than stylistic ligatures such as the various forms of f with following letters. Those are only for presentation, not pronunciation. Even W was once an alphabetic ligature and is the youngest letter in our alphabet.
The two usages of ligatures are so different there really needs to be a different name for them.
Dale